How Does Coinbase Work?

When you buy or sell bitcoin to Coinbase, you’re dealing directly with them.

Some people think that Coinbase is an exchange (where you buy/sell to others), but they’re actually a brokerage (i.e., act as a middleman between buyers and sellers). Coinbase Pro (explained later) is the exchange platform which they offer.

Coinbase provides a simple platform that makes it quick and easy to buy and sell bitcoin in over 30 countries (with transparent and competitive fees). Because of this, Coinbase are well-recommended across the crypto-community (especially for beginners).

Coinbase, Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Prime GBP support is now live for some of our existing customers, and we will continue rolling this out to all UK customers in the coming weeks.

That’s a big deal.

Previously, UK cryptocurrency users had to make deposits and withdrawals to/from Coinbase in euros through SEPA transfers. This involved hidden fees (imperfect FX rates from sterling to euros) and delays (SEPA payments take 1-2 days). This was enough to put many crypto-newcomers off.

Cryptocurrency Funds

Even if one portion of these backups was stolen, your funds would still be safe. Thieves would need to compromise multiple locations (and people) to steal the cryptocurrency. Because Coinbase has multiple backups of the same wallet, it’s also not an issue if they ‘lose’ one segment of their backup.

Fiat Funds

Coinbase store customers’ fiat currencies (i.e., a government-issued currency, like GBP) in separate accounts to the ones they use to run their business. Even if Coinbase went up in flames(!), any fiat currencies on Coinbase should be safe. They couldn’t be claimed by Coinbase or creditors.